Sunday, October 11, 2015

In Defense of Columbus Day

In 2013, I spent Columbus Day at my internship in Portland,
Oregon. It was just another working day; no wall decorations, no pot-luck lunch
of Italian, Greek, and Polish food, no reminiscing with the descendants of
Ellis Island immigrants. In the Pacific Northwest was where I first read in the
papers the movement towards supplanting Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’
Day. To do so would be one of the first steps to reconcile for 520 years of
broken treaties and misunderstandings with the Native Americans. In the Pacific
Northwest, little would be missed as Columbus Day, and the white-ethnic
identity movement, had not permeated the West Coast.

We can thank Richard
Nixon for Columbus Day becoming a paid federal holiday in 1971, the reason
being his own re-election fears. In 1968, his second time running for
President, Nixon won by a small margin in a late-breaking election with
twists-and-turns that took the life of Robert Kennedy. Identity politics was
Nixon’s strategy that helped him win some southern states in 1968 he had lost
in 1960; for 1972, he was expanding the strategy to traditionally
Democratic-voting Catholics.

Why would Christopher Columbus become the second person in
America’s history to have the honor of a Federal holiday? Columbus was a man
whose claim to fame is being the first well-groomed European to discover
America: It is theorized that the Vikings arrived in Newfoundland several
centuries before Columbus. Although not his intention, Columbus’ ‘discovery’ of
America enabled generations of Spanish purveyors to strong-arm natives, and use
and brutalize slaves, in their pursuit of Eldorado and the valley of gold. Even
in 1971, this ought to have been enough ‘dirty laundry’ to name the proposed
Federal holiday after another explorer. The answer is that the holiday should
be named “Knights of Columbus” Day. Speaking on behalf of the largely Catholic
white-ethnic population, it was this large and once-influential Catholic men’s
organization that pushed for the holiday. America was no longer an Anglo-Saxon
Protestant nation, and what better way to signify this than to elevate the
status of local and parochial Christopher Columbus parades to federal
recognition?

Now that Christopher Columbus held the status of a Founding
Father, based on historical bias that elevated his perceived importance, there
was interest and opposition in creating the thirteenth Federal holiday: Martin
Luther King, Jr. Day, in January. In some southern states, the proposed holiday
‘conflicted’ with a holiday commemorating Confederate leaders Stonewall Jackson
and General Robert E. Lee. Staten Island’s Congressional Representative, a
strong supporter for Columbus Day, flat out rejected MLK Day as one holiday too
many. Over opposition, MLK Day became a holiday.

Since that time, there have been proposals to make our
roster of Federal holidays more inclusive. Proposals include the aforementioned
Indigenous People’s Day; Lunar New Year; a Latino Day; Jewish and Islamic holy
days, and even a day for Harvey Milk.Just as America becomes more pluralistic, we’ve run out of opportunities
to create more three-day weekends. Hard-charging American managers would be
reluctant to have more than one paid Monday or Friday off in a month. Bringing
awareness of minority groups and causes into the national conscious requires
another approach, and re-naming Federal holidays has limited potential. My
advice? Enjoy Columbus Day, and if you see fit, give a disclaimer to friends, explaining
the forgotten historical context of the holiday.

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